30 November, 2016

Aleppo: how US-Saudi backed rebels target ‘every Syrian’

‘We
were living in security and peace. These areas are being targeted,
they want to force us to leave. Every Syrian is being targeted,’
one Syrian religious leader told a delegation of reporters who
visited Aleppo earlier this month.

by
Eva Bartlett

Part 1

In early
November, Fares Shehabi, a member of the Syrian parliament from
Aleppo, organized a trip to Aleppo for 13 Western journalists,
including myself, with security provided by forces in the Syrian Arab
Army.

While I had
traveled to Aleppo independently as recently as July and August, for
many others in the delegation, it was their first visit to the city
or their first visit since the war on Syria began in 2011.

On previous
visits to Aleppo, I met with the Aleppo Medical Association and saw a
maternity hospital hit twice by rocket and mortar attacks by
militants under Jaysh al-Fatah (the Army of Conquest), a loose
alliance of anti-government terrorist groups. I met with members of a
branch of the Syria Civil Defense and Christian and Muslim religious
leaders. Just north of the city, I visited Nubl and Zahraa, towns
besieged for more than three years by the Free Syrian Army, the Nusra
Front, and other affiliated terrorist factions before the Syrian Arab
Army drove them out in February of this year. I saw the liberated
region of Bani Zaid and the al-Layramoun industrial district. I
interacted with civilians in public parks, streets, and markets.

Ahead of my
trip earlier this month, I was interested to see what might have
changed following the liberation of still more areas by the SAA. I
also hoped to speak with civilians who had fled the terrorist-held
areas of Aleppo’s eastern districts since I had last visited,
during which time eight humanitarian corridors had been established
for civilians and members of terrorist factions willing to relinquish
their arms or to accept safe passage to areas in Idlib and
government-secured parts of western Aleppo.

However, on
Nov. 4, no one fled terrorist-held areas of Aleppo. Family members of
civilians still there say their loved ones are being used as human
shields by groups like the Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, or Nour al-Din
al-Zenki — the so-called “moderate rebels” and “opposition
forces” backed by the United States, NATO, Israel and Gulf allies
like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.